The course probes the formation of social policy in the United States from its very first cultural and religious roots. Starting with the transition from hunter-gatherer groups to agrarian villages, the course will examine the passage of the Poor Laws that shaped social policy through the colonial period until the beginnings of the 20th century, when the challenge of making the industrial city livable gave rise to the development of the welfare state. As part of this transformation, the provider of social welfare shifted from the local community to the state to the federal government. The course ends with an exploration of the debate regarding the role of government in the late 20th century: should it foster entitlements or self-sufficiency? This course addresses issues of power, oppression, and white supremacy.
The course is part of a sequence in social policy that has an HONORS TRACK. This track will prepare the learner for masters-level work in policy, which involves reading the literature, writing concise summaries and probing critiques. Over the sequence the learner will develop a policy analysis that will create a foundation for professional policy analyst assignments.

Skills You'll Learn

- Distinguish the values inherent in each social policy initiative, - Critique components of a social policy based on their effectiveness at meeting the goals stated in the initiative, - Develop social welfare policy analysis and reform proposals, - Differentiate alternative approaches to social policy problems, - Formulate practice strategies to overcome the historic biases in social welfare programs

Reviews

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4.8 (22 ratings)

5 stars

82%

4 stars

18%

D

Dec 07, 2019

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The content was presented in an interesting way that was easy to understand. Excellent course!

PP

Jun 10, 2019

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Excellent course on the origins of the US welfare state.

From the lesson

Safety nets versus entitlement

As the US Welfare State developed, health care and social services expanded. Tensions developed over the role of safety net programs for the poor and the social policy debate centered on providing entitlements versus developing self-sufficiency.

Taught By

John Robertson

Transcript

Many major changes in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the second wave women's movement, the LGBT movement and the welfare rights movement. There were two major programs that the federal government initiated. The first was the War on Poverty which we've spoken about and the second is the Great Society. So, in this lecture, we're going to review the Great Society changes in federal social welfare. So, from the 1930s, there were efforts to pass a national health care plan, a federally funded single-payer national health care plan. In the Great Society, president Johnson attempted once again to pass a national health care program. He failed as a universal program, but he did win a single-payer national health care program for the aged and disabled called Medicare. People paid into Medicare as they paid into social security and once they became eligible, they received a single-payer national health care program. Now, Medicare is not a national program for everyone in the US, but it is a very big single-payer program. Actually, there are more people in the federal Medicare program than there are in the Canadian National health care program. Then in addition, he created a program that was a federal and state program to provide health care for the poor and this program called Medicaid still is operating and is a significant part of the national health care programs for the United States created in the 1960s as part of the Great Society. We'll talk about them more in course number five. Food stamps. Initially, stamps that use surplus, that allowed consumers to access surplus agricultural products, were created after the Second World War. They kind of started and stopped, but in the 1960s, they were federalized and made eligible, the eligibility was made universal across the country. The Department of Agriculture gave people food stamps, food money to spending grocery stores to use the surplus agricultural products that the United States was creating. As an additional nutrition program that was created, was an expansion and a federalizing to universal level of school lunch and school breakfast. Now, this means tested both food stamps and school lunches and school breakfast has been tested. There are four people that are low income or poor, but their major expansions of the social welfare system. We've talked about as thinking about the war and poverty, the development of head start, a program for poor families to prepare for preschool education. We talked about as part of the civil rights movement, the development of special education as part of the struggle to include people with disabilities. But these two major programs really expanded the federal role. There was also an expansion of something that is called the Title IX program, which is federal money to assist local school districts in dealing with us, the former school segregation and the economic segregation of poor kids of color. So, the Title IX program continues putting money into school districts for intensive education programs. There was a significant investment in seniors, we saw the beginning of that with Social Security and then we talked about the expansion to SSI that came about, that we're going to talk about in a minute. But we also created a system of senior centers and meals on wheels, so people could stay in their homes based programs still operate and we created a Medicaid funded program for homecare, so that if you were frail and elderly and you needed long-term care, whether that's in an institution or nursing home or in your home, Medicaid covers that. So, Nixon then takes the old outdoor relief programs for the aged and disabled and combines them into something called Supplemental Security Income, enormously expanding the pension system for the elderly and particularly the poor elderly and disabled. So, you can see here that we started the 1960s without a national health care plan, without national food distribution system, without special education, without services and a federal level for seniors to keep them in their homes or to maintain for elderly people and institutions and without a national incomes program for the aged and disabled. We end the 1960s with the early 70s with all of these in place, a significant expansion in social welfare. Nixon tried in his first term to pass something called the Family Assistance Program which would have been a universal income for all Americans, so that everyone would get a certain amount of money each year to survive. This would mean that welfare programs would be much less necessary. As you earned more money you would keep that, but as your income rose, your taxes would start collecting enough money to pay for the basic income program. So, this program failed in Congress largely because the Democrats didn't believe it was generous enough. But it is now back as a major topic and several members of both the Republican and Democratic members of Congress are pushing for a National Basic Income Program. So, the Great Society really changed the country greatly and created and now at the end of the 1960s, the Modern Welfare State in the United States is largely in place. What happened in the progressive era? What happened in the New Deal? Then what happened in the Great Society?

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